B36604:241
Preparation for sufferings. Or The best work in the worst times Wherein the necessity,…
Preparation for sufferings. Or The best work in the worst times Wherein the necessity, excellency, and means of our readiness for sufferings are evinced and prescribed; our call to suffering cleared, and the great unreadiness of many professors bewailed. By John Flavel minister of Christ in Devon.Preparation for sufferings. Or The best work in the worst times Wherein the necessity, excellency, and means of our readiness for sufferings are evinced and prescribed; our call to suffering cleared, and the great unreadiness of many profesours bewailed. By John Flavel minister of Christ in Devon.
London: printed for Robert Boulter, 1681
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
3. Your Corruptions must be mortified, else they will be raging and violent in the time of Temptation, and like a Torrent, sweep away all your Convictions and Resolutions. It's sin unmortified within, that makes the Heart like Gun-powder; so that when the Sparkles of Temptation fly about it, (and they fall thick in a suffering hour) they do but touch and take. Hence, the Corruptions of the World are said to be through Lust, 2 Pet. 1.4. With these internal unmortified Lusts, the Tempter holds correspondence: and these be ⟨p. 90⟩the Traitors that deliver up our Souls into his hands.
4. Unless you be diligent and successful in this Work, though you should suffer, yet not like Christians, you will but disgrace Religion, and the Cause for which you suffer: For it's not simple suffering, but suffering as a Christian, that reflects Credit on Religion, and finds acceptation with God. If you be envious, fretful, discontented and revengeful, under your sufferings, what Honour will this bring to Christ? Is not this altogether unlike the Example of your Lord? Isa. 53.7. and the behaviour of suffering Saints? 1 Cor. 4.13. Yet thus it will be, if your Pride, Passion, and Revenge, be not first subdued: For what are the breakings forth of such distempers of Spirit, but as the flushes of Heat in the Face from an ill-affected Liver? Most certain it is, that all these Evils are in your Natures; and as certain it is, they will rise like Mud and filth from the bottom of a Lake, when some eminent Trial shall rake you to the bottom; Natura vexata prodit seipsam.
4. Unless you be diligent and successful in this Work, though you should suffer, yet not like Christians, you will but disgrace Religion, and the Cause for which you suffer: For it's not simple suffering, but suffering as a Christian, that reflects Credit on Religion, and finds acceptation with God. If you be envious, fretful, discontented and revengeful, under your sufferings, what Honour will this bring to Christ? Is not this altogether unlike the Example of your Lord?